Everyday I look at my collection of accesories, all I see is pig-headed greed on a virtual e-marketplace. Some accesories can cost very exorbatant amounts of money to acquire, or are extremely rare (talking about >1% bull that OOO keeps pulling), or heck don't even exist at all (come back when you can show me a divine gear halo). It made sense in the past when Spiral Knights was still mist operated MMO grind machine: you stick your accesory on it's stuck for good shut up and suck it. If you didn't like it, you can destroy it and get nothing back. THEN where will you be? Stupid and accesoryless .
I don't remember how long ago it was (or if people bother to use it; DO YOU!?) but OOO decided they were going to solve this "problem" by introducing accesory unbind tickets. If you haven't already seen them, the cheapest ones will charge you about 3000 energy all the way up to 10,000 energy. This isn't the problem, in fact it's good. They tried to perserve the money aspect of players who spent hundreds of dollars in real life currency TRYING to get them. (Crazy people with money are out there). The problem is the function of the tickets.
When you use one, it removes the accesory and puts it back into your inventory unbound. You are now free to stick it on something else permanently until you pay the next ticket. Who does that? Really... why would you do that? At most if you have something rare that nobody else has then sure it's a good deal. It's like paying 3000 energy for Surge Round shades or some rare Hunter Scarf. Tha's cheap. However it gets expensive if you decide you wish you had one item in two places at once.
This is my proposal: treat accesories like a second costume section. Accesories will become bound once you equip them, unless unbound by paying the ticket. Once bound, the accesory icon will stay in your inventory and you are free to use it on all of your costumes that are also bound. (no ninja stealth accesory unbinding). If your costume or armor is unbound, your accessory will stay bound however and return to your inventory. This is an effort to make the game more colorful and diverse and APPEAR like people can actually get what they want.
Now I already know what you're gonna say, "BUT PAINTOOL, now everyone only needs one type of each accessory, now nobody's gonna buy my prisma bolted vees, hallow, or etc." That's exactly the point. Because now the market is saturated with cheap accesories that people only need one of, accessories will now become an ever accesible fashion joint that even newbies can afford. I would argue that rare accesories will be charged more because of how ubiquitious they will become. Everybody happy.
Yep - I even designed a visual of a potential shoddy interface a while back as part of a Guild overhaul idea set. That pic has slots for things I'd like to see exist that don't too..so yeah... it's shoddy but it was fun to make.
At this point, yes, there are many many accessories, and the game is as you say "saturated." A system like the one suggested would benefit OOO by making players happier and more willing to try and "collect 'em all." We know it works in other games - as usual, I use Warframe as an example, with their "attachments," *cough Nova uses Warframe as an example too much cough.* Maybe that's cause they do a lot of things right over in Warframe, huh? Not everything right...anyway...this is the sk forums. Back to sk talk!
The "recovery" costs would simply shift (without being as horrible because they are not in a vicious "attach and recover" cycle) to "unbinding" costs at either Vise, Bechamel, or even some new NPC. As with other sk items, you'd only unbind to trade to other players.
Heck, we could even give star level to accessories and costumes, the only thing star level would mean is how rare the item was from its source (and how rare that source itself was, so like, items in Dark Harvest Prize Boxes would generally have a comparatively decreased star level, even though the odds for certain things like the aura are low, just because the box itself is super easy to get during the event), or how difficult/tedious it was to obtain (grasping), and have nothing to do with where you attach them. And duh the star level of cosmetics would have no influence on your tier nor would they be locked by player rank etc. Eh, maybe not star level then, but something...else...that would determine unbind cost... I mean really, OOO, haunted auras don't compare to prismatic com units in demand price, but the recovery-pricing-based-on-slot system thinks otherwise. I realize the recovery pricings are roughly based on overall demand that considers most accessories of a slot type, but eh, it really needs to be better.